Daniel Soltero "Horizons #1" Abstract Acrylic on Canvas, 2025

The canvas divides along a low horizon — a heavily worked red field dominating the upper two-thirds, a brushed slate-gray plane anchoring the lower third, a dense black rectangle locked into the upper left like a shadow that refuses to lift. Where red meets gray, a single concentric circle straddles the seam: a coral-orange ring around a deep oxblood core, part solar disk, part oculus. A thin ochre line traces the boundary with the precision of a site plan — not decoration, but datum, the structural baseline from which the composition's tension is measured. The paint throughout is thick and directional; palette-knife passes and brush marks are left unsmoothed, giving the red field a kinetic, almost geological texture that shifts under raking light. Color extends fully around the stretched edges — the object itself is the frame.

The palette is deliberately compressed: cadmium red, carbon black, cool gray, one ochre accent. The composition operates the way a section drawing does — zones defined by edge and plane, a single focal event placed with structural intent. The concentric circle is the only curved element in a field of strict horizontals and verticals, and Daniel Soltero positions it precisely at the horizon, bisected — neither fully above nor below — so the eye cannot resolve whether it is rising or setting, emerging or receding. That irresolution is the painting's subject. The verso is inscribed in the artist's hand: "Horizons #1 / 36" × 36", Acrylic on Canvas / Dan Soltero, 2025 / Las Cruces, New Mexico," with his signature below.

Daniel Soltero holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, where he earned a Harvard University Scholarship and studied under Daniel Libeskind at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture. His architectural practice has ranged across El Paso, San Diego, Granada, and Doha, and his competitive record spans some of the most demanding international design forums of the past three decades — the Atlanta International Olympic Design Competition, the World Trade Center Site Competition, the LA+ Iconoclast Competition at Grand Central Park, the IX Biennale in Florence, and competitions in Rome, Paris, Seville, Amsterdam, Yokohama, Shenzhen, Lagos, and Kazan.

That global range is not incidental to the painting. Soltero describes himself as a "citizen of the world" — shaped by the indigenous cultures, legends, and folklore of peoples across North America, Central America, Europe, West Asia, and the Middle East — and that cosmopolitan fluency feeds an abstract practice grounded in universal formal languages: horizon, circle, plane, light. He has exhibited at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts and at Jonas Burger's artist village, Lehderstrasse, Berlin. His work is held in private collections including the Lindberg and McClure Collections in Las Cruces, the Luhan Collection in Goodyear, Arizona, the Cordova Collection in Phoenix, and the Soltero Collection in Saint Louis. Horizons #1 was painted here in Las Cruces in 2025 — the work of an architect who spent a career designing cities and arrived at abstraction with the same structural discipline intact.

For the collector who thinks about how a painting is built, not just how it looks, Horizons #1 rewards close attention. Soltero's formal moves are architectural in the strictest sense: the canvas is partitioned into discrete zones by hard horizontal and vertical edges, each field assigned a role — mass, energy, ground — the way a floor plan assigns function to rooms. The black rectangle reads as weight and void; the red field as heat and presence; the gray as water, earth, or open sky depending on how the circle above resolves. That circle — orange ring around oxblood core — is the sole deviation from orthogonal geometry in the entire composition. Soltero places it bisected at the horizon, at roughly the golden-section point from the left edge. The ochre seam below it functions exactly as a reveal joint functions in architecture: it defines the boundary between materials without merging them, a line so thin it reads as a gap rather than a mark.

The paint handling in the red field shows active, gestural application — heavy-body acrylic worked in overlapping palette-knife passes, leaving directional ridges and occasional incised lines that activate the surface under changing light. The gray field below is laid in with broader, more horizontal strokes, quieter and more passive, reinforcing its role as ground to the upper field's figure. The result is a painting that operates simultaneously as rigorous geometry and as something felt — a horizon that is experienced, not merely depicted. Collectors of Hard-Edge abstraction, Color Field painting, and architect-artists working in the tradition of John McLaughlin or Frederick Hammersley will recognize the lineage immediately.

CONDITION

Very Good. No remarkable damage. The painted surface is sound, color fields are crisp, and the edge painting is intact on all four sides. Sold unframed as a gallery-wrapped canvas, ready to hang.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• 36" H × 36" W × 1½" D
• Medium: Acrylic on canvas
• Verso inscription (artist's hand): "Horizons #1 / 36" × 36", Acrylic on Canvas / Dan Soltero, 2025 / Las Cruces, New Mexico"
• Signed by the artist on verso
• Painting extends around all canvas edges; unframed, gallery-wrap